


to be me without you

by BellamyWanheda



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Childhood Sweethearts, Dom/sub, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Ex Sex, Exes, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Minor Becho, New York City, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Smut, Teacher Bellamy Blake, but it's a bellarke story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:39:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25738180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BellamyWanheda/pseuds/BellamyWanheda
Summary: He was a kid the last time he was just Bellamy. After that, for twelve years, it was always Bellamy and Clarke, one entity, a package deal.Bellamy and Clarke started dating at 15, got married at 21 and divorced at 27... Now, two years after she left she comes barreling back into Bellamy's life, right as he's starting to put it back together without her.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Bellamy Blake/Echo, Eric Jackson/Nathan Miller, Raven Reyes/Miles Ezekiel Shaw
Comments: 9
Kudos: 44





	to be me without you

**Author's Note:**

> I'm actually really excited about this story, I've been headcannoning this verse to myself for months. It's technically a slow burn, but there will be plenty of smut because I'm me and I apparently can't not write graphic sex. This first chapter is shorter than the rest will be, just fyi. 
> 
> I just noticed that this is the 13 thousandth bellarke fic on ao3! So that’s cool. Congrats on all that fanfic everyone.

“No Bellamy, you know what your problem is? You met your soulmate when you were 15 and you never learned how to be a fucking person without her.” 

Bellamy felt Miller’s words like a blow to the chest. Some combination of shock, anger and hurt welled up inside him, the impact was immediate. Miller had been Bellamy’s best friend for the last 11 years, since freshman year of college when they were randomly assigned to the same dorm room and wound up bonding over a shared hatred of their third roommate. He was one of the witnesses at Bellamy and Clarke’s courthouse wedding. And he had been by Bellamy’s side when his marriage fell apart and through the ensuing divorce. They’d had disagreements and even outright fights throughout the years but this one was now different. 

And the thing is, it’s not like Miller was exactly wrong. He was with Clarke his entire adult life, up until about two years ago, and most of his adolescence as well. He was a kid the last time he was just Bellamy. After that, for twelve years, it was always Bellamy and Clarke, one entity, a package deal. It made getting divorced lonely, most people at least had a sense of self before they met their partner. Bellamy didn’t. In fact he hadn’t realized how intrinsically linked he really was to her until after she left. So in a way, Miller was just speaking the truth, he didn’t know how to be a person without Clarke. But how does that meme go again? It’s true but you shouldn’t say it? 

There was maybe more he could say, go off about how Miller crossed a line, but instead he just let out a defeated “fuck you man…” 

Miller rolled his eyes, huffing, “whatever, do what you want.” His shoulders were tense and he faux casually flipped Bellamy off as he walked across the intersection to where Jackson was waiting, having distanced himself from the fight some time ago. 

Bellamy took a deep breath as he watched them walk down the street towards the subway, towards their apartment, their home. Where they lived together, where they had a life together, and he felt a pang in his chest. He missed having a partner in life sometimes, especially now after Miller had so rudely brought up that that part of his life was over. 

The fight had started innocuously enough, they were sitting at a table in a dive bar on the Lower East Side that Raven had picked (which Bellamy much preferred to the bougie cocktail bar in Williamsburg that Harper had picked last time their friends hung out, although the thought had uninvitedly crossed his mind that Clarke would have loved the place). 

And then Miller went and picked a fight. Basically he was annoyed that Bellamy had been casually seeing Echo but wouldn’t commit to a relationship and that the more Echo got integrated into their friend group the shittier Bellamy was making this. Bellamy said Miller was afraid of not being in a relationship so of course he wouldn’t understand. It was one of those things that somehow led to every crack in their friendship. Miller could be selfish, Bellamy could be withholding, things like that. But Bellamy was pissed that he brought up Clarke, it went too far, it ignored their rules for arguing. The unspoken Geneva convention of their friendship. Don’t talk about Bellamy’s fucking ex wife. 

He was still in a shitty mood when he got home, jamming the key into the lock more forcefully than necessary and slamming the door behind him with uncalled for aggression. Raven was in the kitchen setting the coffee pot for the next morning when he walked in, she had bailed on the bar a while before Bellamy left so she had beaten him home. 

“Wow, what’s your deal?” she asked, frowning in concern. 

Bellamy rolled his eyes and huffed out a breath, “it’s nothing, Miller’s just a dick.” 

She nodded thoughtfully but clearly picked up on the vibe that Bellamy didn’t want to talk about it anymore and went back to measuring water into the pot. 

Bellamy shut his bedroom door, slumped back onto his bed and stared aimlessly at the ceiling. He really didn’t think about Clarke that much anymore, just stray thoughts here and there. Maybe that’s what he was so mad about, not Miller’s implication that he couldn’t function without his ex wife but that it forced him to remember their relationship and reexamine his life without her. Personally, Bellamy preferred burying it.

It had been harder at first. When you spend your like, 12 most formative years with someone and then they are suddenly just ripped away from your life it tends to leave a bit of a whole. Nearly every new experience he had in that time he had with Clarke. 

Hell, he couldn’t even pay his taxes without remembering the first time he and Clarke had to file them themselves. It was right after they moved from from the tiny Southern California town they grew up in to New York City, Bellamy at NYU and Clarke at Pratt. She couldn’t find her social security card anywhere, they’d spent an hour looking for it before discovering it unhelpfully in the pages of an old sketchbook. This led to an argument about responsibility that he then recalled had to led to some rather kinky sex on the floor of her dorm room. Or at least kinkier than you expect sex that stemmed from taxes to be. 

But it was more than that too. Bellamy never learned how to be alone because he never had to be. It wasn’t the only basic life skill that he hadn’t mastered as the result of marrying his high school girlfriend at 21, but it was the most noticeably important after Clarke left. 

Really he just wanted to convince himself that having a real partner and being in love was what he missed and if he just found the right girl it could all be like it was before. But if forced to be brutally honest he could admit that he missed _her_ too. He spent so long hearing Clarke’s commentary of the world around him that he could almost fill it in without her, could guess what critiques she would have about the movie he watched or the funny quip she would make about the couple sitting across from him on the subway. At first it was like a drowning silence he had to fill or his life would feel incomplete. But it was better now, and it had been long enough since he had last seen her (on what was one of the worst days of his life, right up there with the day his mom died) that he’d mostly lost the Clarke voice in his head. 

Plus who knows how much Clarke had changed since she left him. _His_ Clarke could be long gone by now. He knew she moved to San Francisco when they split up but she could’ve gone anywhere in the world after that, could be doing anything with her life, she could’ve gotten any new job, any new hobbies. She could be married. She could have a kid. He had to squeeze his eyes shut at the last two suggestions because even though she had abruptly divorced him and moved across the country and on some level he hated her for it, there was still some part of him that felt like she was still _his_ and she would always be his. Just like a part of him knew he would always be hers. Because Clarke was his soulmate. It was just a statement of fact. 

Maybe it was why he couldn’t commit to new relationships too, loving anyone but her almost felt like… cheating. Or maybe he was just scared that if he let himself fall in love with someone new he would discover that it wasn’t just love and partnership missing from his life and he would be forced to confront the fact that really it was Clarke that he missed. 

Bellamy rolled over and buried his face into his pillow. He felt like screaming into it but he didn’t want his roommate to hear. Maybe if he fell asleep like this the pillow would just suffocate him, that sounded nicer and easier than confronting his emotions and life decisions right now. Instead he just rolled back over and reached into his pocket to pull out his phone. He took a deep breath as he clicked on his messages app and opened a new one to Echo. [Fuck it] he thought to himself, [gotta start somewhere]. 

**Bellamy**

_hey, you feel like getting dinner this week?_

He tossed his phone face down on the bed, the way you do after sending a text you’re not quite sure about. He stared up at the ceiling weighing the pros and cons of various restaurants, where to take a girl who’ve been fucking for the last few weeks on a first date is a weird question to tackle. 

Less than 30 seconds later his phone vibrated with a text notification, he sait up and scrambled to grab it. 

**Echo**

_yeah, sure, I’d love to. Friday good?_

Bellamy smiled to himself, he could totally do this. He typed back a reply immediately. 

**Bellamy**

_perfect, we can talk specifics later in the week ;)_

\----- 

Bellamy went to work the next morning with more of a spring in his step than usual. Even his usually boring and often aggravating morning commute on the subway didn’t seem that bad. He’d been pissed at Miller last night, rightfully he might add, but his friend’s words had also forced Bellamy to confront some things. He should probably talk about them in therapy too, he paid that woman too much to constantly skirt around one of the biggest, mostly unresolved, issues in his life. Somehow even confronting his childhood trauma and deep seated unconscious resentment towards his sister was preferable to discussing his failed marriage. Although, granted, it was also the collapse of what had been the most important relationship in his life and no one enjoys discussing something like that. 

He was actually excited about his date with Echo too, even if asking her on it had felt like more of an obligation at the time. He was nervous too for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Probably just that he hadn’t been on a date _date_ since his divorce, he had really only been dating for the purposes of casual sex in the last year. It had taken him closer to a year to do even that and the first time he did hook up with someone he had accidentally called her Clarke when he came. In his defense, while she wasn’t technically only the second girl he had ever been with, she was the first girl he’d ever been with without Clarke also being present so, force of habit. And hey, they were married, not dead, sometimes they got adventurous… 

Reminiscing about past threesomes with your ex wife on the F train at 7:30 in the morning before going into a classroom to spend 7 hours teaching a bunch of third graders is generally not a great idea though so Bellamy snapped his mind back to the week ahead. Echo. It could be good with her, he thought. She was absolutely nothing like Clarke but that was part of the draw. 

\---- 

Work went about as well as usual, Bellamy taught at a fairly uppity private school in the East Village but the kids were mostly cool and he did love being a teacher. It’s all he had ever wanted to do really. But 8 year olds will tire anyone out and he trudged up the stairs to his second floor walkup in Bushwick he was just looking forward to the cold beer he knew was waiting in his fridge and the old episodes of The Office he could pull up on netflix. Maybe he’d even order takeout tonight he thought, he knew Raven was staying at Shaw’s so he’d have the place to himself. He peered into his bag as he rounded the stairs and fished around for his keys until a soft voice stopped him dead in his tracks. 

“Hi.”


End file.
